Epic Road Trip 2017 Day 10 part 2

After the Old North Bridge, we headed to the train station, parked the van and rode the train into the city for the Independence Day festivities.  We were going to hear the Boston Pops from the shore of the Charles River, and then watch the fireworks.  We were excited!

 We were looking for a place to eat.  We actually ended up eating at the odd shaped building in the middle of the picture.

 We wanted to eat dinner in Quincy Market, but it was packed and very hard to find a place to sit.

 So we ate at the odd shaped building and it was very good.  Now, onto the concert!

 These are some of my favorite pictures of the trip.  The lighting was perfect over the city.

 The area for watching the actual concert was very small, so we ended up sitting in an overflow area.  This screen was huge and the sound was great.  There were food trucks all around.  Our one regret was that we had no chairs and had to sit on the ground.  We got there about 30 minutes before the concert started, and before the night was over it was packed, with no room left on the grass to sit on.

 It was such a patriotic concert.  In the beginning, when the Star Spangled Banner was played, everyone got up and sang along. I looked around and saw the police officers (there were many) standing at attention with their hands on their heart, saluting the flag. It was so moving, in this day and age, to see that many people singing the national anthem, and no one (that we could see) protesting.  Later on, they played the songs of the military, one by one, and the men and women that had served in that particular branch stood up and everyone cheered and clapped for them.  It was an excellent concert.  Right after the concert ended, the fireworks began and what a fireworks show it was!  It was set to music, and was so colorful.  We had a great view of the show!  Jackson loved it, until he crawled up in Ben's lap and dozed off, even though it was very loud!

After the concert and show was over, we tried to leave quickly.  The train/subway closed at Midnight (or so we thought), so we started walking that way, as did everybody else.  When we reached the subway stop, the line was up the stairs and well out into the street.  We knew if we waited in that line, we would probably miss the last train.  Ellie found a map on her phone and led us to another subway station.  Several miles away.  By this time we were exhausted, but we had to keep walking.  Poor Jack gave out and Ellie carried him on her shoulders.  Sam, Ben and Emma were amazing and never complained.  We finally got the to station and got on the last train out.  By the time we reached where the van was, it was after 1am and we had walked over 8 miles.  Wow.  What a day!  And we were getting back up the next morning and heading into Boston again.  We all literally fell into our beds that night.

Epic Road Trip 2017 Day 10 part 1

Tuesday was July 4th and we were so blessed to be in the Boston area.  We stayed in a missionary apartment in a church about 20 minutes from the city.  It was kind of strange staying in a church building, but the apartment was so nice and someone had stocked it with food and everything we could have needed.  What a blessing that was to us!

But, even though it was a holiday, the laundry needed to be done.  So Paul, Sam, Ben and I got up and took the laundry to the laundromat.   It didn't take that long to finish up and we headed back to the church to get Ellie, Emma and Jackson.

We headed to the old North Bridge where the shot heard around the world was fired.  After much discussion, I think we convinced the kids that the shot wasn't really heard around the world!  It was a beautiful day and when we arrived, we didn't realize that the Declaration of Independence was being read outloud down by the bridge, so we hurried and walked down the path.

 After the reading, these soldiers fired their guns.

 As these soldiers were walking off the bridge, someone in the crowd began singing God Bless America.  Most everybody joined in.  It was quite a patriotic experience.

After the demonstration, we walked around some more.  There was so much to see.  We had been here once before, many years ago when the older kids were young.  Ellie was just a bit over a year old when we came before.

 They wanted their picture taken together because they all were wearing 4th of July shirts.